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Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Carter With Criticism of Bush

PLAINS, Ga., Oct. 11 - For his peacemaking and humanitarian work over the last 25 years, former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, and the Nobel committee used the occasion to send a sharp rebuke to the Bush administration for its aggressive policy toward Iraq.

``In a situation currently marked by threats of the use of power,'' the Nobel citation read, ``Carter has stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international cooperation based on international law, respect for human rights and economic development.''

Gunnar Berge, the Nobel committee chairman, was even more direct.

The award ``should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken,'' Mr. Berge said shortly after the award was announced in Oslo.

The peace prize often carries a political message, but never before has it been so pointed.

Mr. Carter, beaming in the affection of his hometown today, said he did not bring up the subject of Iraq when President Bush called to congratulate him this morning.

``I feel very strongly about it, yes,'' said Mr. Carter, who has said the administration should not act unilaterally against Iraq. ``But I didn't think it was appropriate to mention it. I haven't spent the last 22 years walking around saying what I would or wouldn't do if I were still president.''

Administration officials sought to sidestep any controversy over the Nobel committee chairman's remarks, saying they were proud Mr. Carter had won the award.

The Nobel Peace Prize, which carries a stipend of $1 million, recognizes the 39th president for his ``vital contribution'' to the Camp David Accords in 1978, his ``outstanding commitment to human rights,'' his work fighting tropical diseases like guinea worm and river blindness and his continuing interest in furthering democracy. On Monday, Mr. Carter, 78, is off to Jamaica to monitor elections.

More than any other former president, Mr. Carter, a Democrat and former Georgia governor, has stretched the gravitas and star power of the Oval Office to promote democratic values across the world. Unlike his fellow ex-presidents, he never joined corporate boards or went on the lecture circuit.

Instead, with seemingly endless energy and his signature toothy grin, he trudged up mountains to meet with warlords, cajoled dictators into granting more freedoms and found a second career of ``waging peace,'' as he calls it. Everywhere he goes, so does his wife, Rosalynn, his most trusted confidant.

His activism has not always won praise. Sometimes he goes on missions with the support of the United States government; sometimes not. When he intervened in an escalating dispute between North and South Korea in 1994, he was criticized by President Bill Clinton for getting too chummy with North Korea's dictator.

Mr. Carter, who won the presidency in 1976, does not disagree that he has been a better former president than president, having lost a landslide election to Ronald Reagan in 1980. He is an icon in many Third World countries, especially in Latin America. He has been nominated more than 10 times for the peace prize, although not in 1978, the year Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt won it for signing a treaty Mr. Carter wrote. Officials said they received his nomination too late.

Since then, so many nominations have come and gone, Mr. Carter said, he resigned himself to never winning.

``When I got the call this morning at 4 a.m., I thought it was a joke,'' Mr. Carter said. ``I didn't even know this was the day the prize was announced. I usually follow these things, but this year I wasn't paying attention. And then when I talked to the committee, and realized I really won, I was thrilled.''

He said he was accepting the prize on behalf of ``suffering people around the world.'' He plans to use the money for an emergency fund for the Carter Center, the private peace-making foundation that Mr. and Mrs. Carter founded 20 years ago.

``I can't tell you how many times I get a call in the middle of the night and some crisis is about to break out,'' he said. ``Now we'll have the funds to get there.''

Friends say though Mr. Carter is driven more by his deeply held Christianity than by prizes or compliments, he had always ached for the Nobel Peace Prize.

``This is terrific,'' said Robert Rubin, former treasury secretary and a fishing buddy of the ex-president. ``This will take someone who already has a great deal of moral stature and give him even greater stature, which will make him even more effective at what he does,'' Mr. Rubin said.

Douglas Brinkley, a historian who wrote, ``The Unfinished Presidency'' about Mr. Carter, said this prize will transform the former president's legacy, especially his defeat by Mr. Reagan.

``It's the most important moment for him because in one afternoon by being awarded the Nobel he has wiped the word `loser' off of his chest,'' Mr. Brinkley said. ``Now he is the Nobel prize winner and that will be the tag that will stay with him for his remaining years.''

Mr. Carter is the third United States president to win the award, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Also, he is the second Georgian to win. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King won it in 1964 . Mr. Carter has said on many occasions that one of the biggest regrets of his life is that he never met Dr. King, a contemporary. As governor of Georgia, Mr. Carter hung Dr. King's portrait in the state Capitol. Mr. Carter's stiffest competition this year came from President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and a handful of Chinese dissidents and U.S. disarmament experts.

Some of Mr. Carter's biggest accomplishments, the Nobel committee said, were the conflicts he prevented. In 1994, with United States warships steaming toward Haiti, Mr. Carter averted a bloody crisis by convincing a military junta to leave instead of fight American forces.

He also brokered a truce in Bosnia that year and has negotiated at length with warring groups in the Sudan. He made news this spring by visiting Cuba and publicly scolding Cuban president Fidel Castro.

``When he was president, he refused to play the insider Washington game and did things on his own,'' Brinkley said. ``So in a sense this achievement is a result of the very same character traits that doomed him politically.''

In Plains, the peanut farm town where Mr. Carter grew up and launched his political career, Main Street was shut down today for a ceremony and all residents - all 637 - were cordially invited. It was Jimmy's day - though it's almost always like that here.)

There were farmers in straw hats, fanning themselves with Nobel prize programs. And banners that

read ``Congratulations Jimmy! We love you!'' And lots of hugs and ``Way to go, man!''

It didn't take long after Mr. Carter received the call from Oslo for the word to spread in Plains, where Mr. Carter and his wife live.

Craig Walters, an elementary school teacher here, said his father called him at 8 a.m.

``My daddy was yelling at me `Get up! Get dressed! Get downtown! Jimmy won a Nobel!'''

Though still active writing books, hammering houses together with Habitat for Humanity, fund-raising, chairing election-reform meetings, and making chairs (the ex-president is a wood-working addict), Mr. Carter is slowing down. A quiet search for a successor is taking place at the Carter Center, with headquarters in Atlanta and with projects in 65 countries. ``I see the end of my active life coming in the next few months or years,'' Mr. Carter said today.

``But I have to tell you, these years are among some of the most gratifying of my life,'' he added, his eyes brightening. ``I have complete independence. I have access to world leaders. I can go

Today, when asked his position on Iraq, Mr. Carter said he would not have voted for the resolution

passed in the Senate, authorizing the president to use force.

At a media briefing later, White House officials tried to play down the criticism from Mr. Carter and the Nobel chairman. White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said Mr. Bush began his day with a 7 a.m. phone call congratulating Mr. Carter, and added: ``The president thinks this is a great day for Jimmy Carter; that's what he's going to focus on.''

At that, the veteran White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, who covered Mr. Carter in office, asked: ``Isn't it a great day for the American people? And did Carter express to the president

his well known opposition to a war against Iraq?''

Mr. Fleischer replied: ``I can just tell you, Helen, it was friendly call. It was a short call.

And the purpose of the call was to congratulate him on the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize.''